Be True To Yourself

All of us have this deep desire to be disciplined, to develop new skills, and continually grow.

Let us take an example .

You want to get into meditation. You attend courses on meditation, and you come out enlightened.  You evaluate your situation and decide that you will meditate for 30 min at 7 a.m. every day. You start your daily ritual in real earnest. You are disciplined, and you continue with this process to a point it almost becomes a habit. You see some benefits. You are feeling good about it.

Then two weeks from the time you started, you have a four-day conference to attend in a different city. You take your meditation mat along, confident that you will continue with the practice even when you are attending the Conference. Unfortunately, the Conference is demanding a lot of your time. You are socializing till the late hours, and there is morning breakfast networking happening all the four days. Despite your best intention, there is a break in your ritual. You then get back to base. Unfortunately, much as you try, something or the other disrupts your routine. You slowly rationalize, the other stuff is more important than the discipline of meditation. The memory of the meditation training course fades, and you are back to where you were before attending the training program. The only thing that remains with you is the knowledge of how to meditate.

The example of meditation is just illustrative. It can be music, tennis, volunteering, cycling, Journaling, or something as simple of getting up at 6 a.m. or being disciplined about food intake- any goal or desire you wish to pursue. I have had my share of start-stop-start experiences, and through all these, I have realized this simple fact.

When you initiate something and give up midway, your subconscious will start doubting your conscious intentions. It starts sending out subtle thoughts that will go something like this “ You are not good at achieving goals which are in your control, how will you achieve big goals that will not be in your control?.” You might appear confident and full of swag, but deep down, there will be a voice reminding you, ” I know your true colors, you can’t keep to your commitments.”

The bottom line is this. Your subconscious mind is an ever-present witness to whatever you do or do not do in your life.

Everyone else may think that you are great at what you do, but if your inner witness does not believe you, you will keep sabotaging yourself at some point.

On the other hand, even if everyone has some opinion about you, but your inner witness believes you for who are, you will always be fulfilled and contented. You know you are good.

Your self-image goes up when you honor your commitments, particularly to yourself.

So the next time you commit yourself to something, come what may find a way to fulfill it. Don’t give up just because some external circumstance has changed.

Amid this unprecedented  COVID lockdown, many of us have developed a consciousness about a lot of things that we took for granted. I am aware of many people who have invested time and effort in developing rituals of gratitude, meditation, family time, etc. Whenever some semblance of normalcy returns, don’t give up on these good habits. Cultivate them further and make them count in your life.

Don’t miss out on your commitments to yourself; they are what make your big dreams a reality.